“I am not aware that this service is not being provided [by the corporations], because the number of firefighters and vehicles is not exhausted”, António Nunes told Lusa.
According to the president of the LBP, there are 28,000 firefighters and 4,000 vehicles in Portugal, a number considered “sufficient for the population ratio”.
“I have not been told of any situation in which the corporations are having problems ensuring the services they usually provide to the population in their municipalities”, he stressed.
When asked about complaints from local authorities and the population about the lack of resources to fight fires in the north and centre of the country, António Nunes stressed that “the resources may not be properly distributed”.
“This is an issue that has to do with the civil protection system because firefighters do not have the autonomy to decide where to go”, he pointed out.
António Nunes added that the resources are mobilised by the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority, the entity responsible for managing the operations.
“The resources and men are placed in certain places, but they may be needed in others and, if they are not sent, they will not know”, he stressed.
The president of the LBP also said that he had “no proof, nor absolute relation that there is a lack of resources”, attributing the fact that this criticism is made in certain places to a “possible lack of coordination”.
“What I have heard from commanders, mayors and the general public is that firefighters are not present in the various locations for a simple reason: because, eventually, a lack of coordination led to them not being deployed,” he argued.
For the LBP, the issue is “a problem of coordination, command and control and not a lack of resources,” noting that “in a specific place” this lack of resources may occur.
“What we need to know is whether this can be avoided by sending resources from one theatre of operations to another. To do this, it would be necessary to avoid dividing civil protection into sub-regions, which do not have the capacity or autonomy to do so, and to avoid destroying the capacity of the districts,” he stressed, arguing that “there is a need for a public policy of civil protection and support for the population that needs to be defined.”